Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Monday December 14, 2009 @11:20AM
from the i-recommend-team-america dept.

dasButcher writes "One of the biggest obstacles to fighting hackers and cyber-criminals is that many operate in the safe harbors of their home countries, insulated from prosecution by authorities in foreign countries where their targets reside. As Larry Walsh writes in his blog, several security vendors and a growing number of countries are now beginning to consider the creation of a global police force that would have trans-border jurisdiction to investigate and arrest suspected hackers."

And I think this would be the same way that ACTA is - USA laws forced in to other countries. No thank you. And I'm pretty sure Russia and China don't want to introduce USA laws either, and with those countries out of it, is there any point?

First order of business should be to clear out Redmond. That's where the damage comes from. Microsoft is not a technology problem, it is a personnel problem. Get rid of the staff promoting, signing off on, or boosting Microsoft products (on both sides of the fence) and you kill off 99.9999% percent of existing malware and virtually all vectors for botnets.

The economy could use a $ 10 000 000 000 USD boost about now right? Of course. Get rid of Conficker and the others. The savings for the first yea [google.com]

I foresee this running into a lot of problems. I mean, we can't even get a lot of countries to agree to ICJ (International Court of Justice) jurisdiction. How are we going to get them to agree to let people physically into their countries to investigate crimes and make arrests? Ain't gonna happen... and this kind of thing is only effective if everyone signs up without reservations.

I don't know. Countries are pretty good about extraditing murder suspects.

'Team X can fly in, talk to the police here, poke around, and report their findings." That doesn't sound too controversial or hard to pass as a first step. Then when that works out, add allow them to pull in the local police to make the arrest, and you have a nice, tidy system.

That's because murder is illegal everywhere. Countries may disagree about the specific penalties (death penalty vs. life imprisonment, for example) but everyone agrees that it's a serious crime and has to be severely punished, no matter where it happens or the nationalities of the people involved.

Internet law is a lot more variable. Should, say, Saudi Arabia be able to deport people from the US for online blasphemy? Should the RIAA be able to deport someone from Sweden (just to pick a random example...)

Of course you can see a lot of problems with this. So can they. They are trying to consider it logistically. There would be hundreds of things to considers and they know this. But as more and more countries face these same technological challenges they will want to do something about the issues they face and this Global force may be their answer.

It is likely to happen at some point and there will be many legal challenges to the jurisdiction issues that will be faced, but eventually we'll have this in pl

> Enforceable primarily in the USA, to a smaller degree in a few friendly countries, and with a handful of other countries agreeing to extradite suspects, maybe, if we ask them politely enough on days of the month evenly divisible by 13.

> Enforceable primarily in the USA, to a smaller degree in a few friendly countries, and with a handful of other countries agreeing to extradite suspects, maybe, if we ask them politely enough on days of the month evenly divisible by 13.

That's not how it goes. USA is already part of many treaties, except that they always refuse to extradite their own citizens to other countries. In this case they probably want a one-way "treaty" too.

The US demands that its citizens be given the due process of law as is guaranteed by our Constitution and laws. This is key when some random country demands we hand over a citizen to have them try him or her for some supposed crime.

Ya, it could never happen. The majority of nations would never agree to having a law enforcement group that could operate in any of their countries.

But, imagine if they did. they could call it something like "International Criminal Police Organization". They could establish a "National Central Bureau" in each country, where national law enforcement officers of that country would work with their peers in other nations, and help fight crime around the world.

I object to this for a different reason: I consider the concept of an organization with world jurisdiction intrinsically dangerous and unacceptable. It's like a monopoly: if you don't like their rules, where else are you going to go?

I object to this for a different reason: I consider the concept of an organization with world jurisdiction intrinsically dangerous and unacceptable. It's like a monopoly: if you don't like their rules, where else are you going to go?

To the unsettled reaches of the outer solar system? Hey, it worked for Mal Reynolds....

This is true (and is one of the main reasons most documents released by international bodies such as the UN are aspirational or voluntary only).

But, there are real and serious problems with cross-jurisdictional crime (of many types... forget hacking, try fraud, money laundering etc) that traditional forces find it very very hard to tackle due to jurisdiction. There's a balance to be had somewhere. You shouldn't be able to get away with things just by fleeing to a different place. It's like the old 'driving

Well, I'm fine with you leaving a country not to have to be subject to the rules of that country. But if you keep interfering with that country's business, e.g. by hacking computers in that country, there's a strong argument in favor of subjecting you to their rules.

Would it be reasonable for you to lob cars over the border into another country, and not expect that they try to stop you?
In most countries, lobbing cars across the border is probably illegal, but even if your country doesn't stop you, I'm p

I consider the concept of an organization with world jurisdiction intrinsically dangerous and unacceptable. It's like a monopoly(...)

I fully and strongly agree with you!
WHO would be the head of such an organization? WHO/Which country will decide what to do and which are the rules? (of course the answer to that is implicit nowadays..)

Such an organization could be the first step, being the second to suppress the rights to privacy (of course, in order to find who are breaking the law among many other things..). Because if that organization is created, WHO will be able to stand against them if they decide to override the right to privacy

Personally I think anything with "trans-border jurisdiction" is just asking to be taken advantage of. I like the seperation of government and jurisdiction, although I definately think that something like th UN should reform some of their policies on extradition. In any case, trans-border jurisdiction means jack squat if you cant get the local government to cooperate.

Like the U.S. law in congress right now forcing foreign banks to provide all information related to American owning accounts internationally, close them, or have 30% of the bank's assets in the United States withheld.

How about the recent EU SWIFT information handover to the U.S.?

I could see the U.S. doing something similar with internet connections of ISPs that run through the U.S., or have buisness in the U.S. Perhaps they will withhold 30% of their bandwidth.

The real problem is the lack of international cooperation and extradition treaties that would cover not only cyber crime, but crimes of all sorts. Creating a hyper-focused solution for a narrow aspect of a broader problem is only going to create more problems, and ultimately erode more freedoms than the number of crimes it may solve.

and ultimately erode more freedoms than the number of crimes it may solve.

So your proposed solution is international cooperation and extradition treaties to cover all crimes? To me that sounds like a global police state. I like the fact that separate countries have separate jurisdictions and separate laws. If a question of law or right and wrong is strong enough and means enough to you, then declare war; otherwise butt the hell out of other peoples' business. People these days, especially in the United States, have become far too willing to use the power of law and government to crush individual freedoms and "deviants" whom they don't like while at the same time failing to recognize that they could be next. Ask yourself this: are you wiling to pick up a rifle and risk your own life and limb to enforce a law? If the answer is "no" then maybe its not important enough and we shouldn't have that law.

It's even worse then that. The establishment has been pushing the fact that people are not responsible for their own actions for the last 2 generations. This in turn results in more government power as people expect the government to step in and control things instead of them having to do it themselves and it looks to me like the damn Blue Bloods have succeeded in corrupting the "Great Experiment of Democracy" and taken power back from "We the People" but I don't have any suggestions other then outright exe

So your proposed solution is international cooperation and extradition treaties to cover all crimes?

No, not all crime, that would be extreme and unnecessary. My point is dealing with any specific crime perpetrated on country A while in or having relocated to country B is better dealt with via treaty that has been negotiated and ratified by both country A's and B's due process for doing so rather than either or both countries conceding their sovereignty to a police force that will ultimately be under

Wouldn't that be Interpol? Sounds too much like big brother when someone asks for a police force that already exists. The bigger problem with hackers is they are hard to find regardless of which country they are in. Sure Iranian Hackers are harder to catch but with their bandwidth are they really a threat? Do we need yet another redundant police force?

who will prosecute the suspects? A criminal trial is expensive and ends up importing criminals to whichever nation chooses to prosecute. That's the reason that the Somali pirates get turned loose. A similar situation would arise for trans-border cyber crime. Everyone would hope that someone else would prosecute.

Isn't that pretty much what the International Criminal Police Organization is supposed to do? It's the second largest intergovernmental conglomeration behind the UN, and has almost 200 member countries. Given that cyber crime is crime nonetheless, I'd hope that they were gearing up to be able to handle more and more of it. I feel like more than anything, the laws need to catch up to the criminals in these cases- or they aren't really criminals at all.

Why do Americans always seem to have this attitude? It always seems like they want all the benefits from being part of international organisations, but none of the responsibilities. When I did International Law at university the running joke when being introduced to a new treaty or instrument was that it had been signed by "basically everyone... except the US".

One quite shocking example: the only two countries that are not signatories to the Convention on the Rights of the Child are Somalia and the US (and Somalia has announced plans to ratify it soon). I mean for God's sake, what possible objection could the US have against a treaty aiming to prevent the organised sale of children into slavery and child prostitution??

There are quite a few other fairly fundamental treaties that the US is virtually alone in not ratifying. Kinda amusing really when you consider the UN building itself is in New York. Why provide the facilities for all these other countries to come in and make agreements, and not participate yourself? Seems odd to me...

Because we value our liberty and sovereignty more than most other countries?

I mean for God's sake, what possible objection could the US have against a treaty aiming to prevent the organised sale of children into slavery and child prostitution??

Because that's not all it does and many Americans hold legitimate concerns about it's passages regarding economic, social and cultural "rights" and are worried that it would intrude into the parent->child relationship?

Fair enough. I'm an American citizen (by marriage) and have lived in the US a while, so I know the American psyche and can see where you're coming from.

I just think it's odd that it's so often the US, and the US alone, that has lingering concerns stopping them ratifying things like this.

If it were 180 countries vs. 20 countries, then that would tend to suggest that there were some serious and genuine issues, since multiple countries have come to the same conclusion. If it were 195 and 5 even. But it's very

I don't think it has anything to do with our "power", although that does make it easier. Most Americans do not want to see us surrender our sovereignty to trans-national institutions and treaties. I will personally always oppose attempts to do so, simply because most of the rest of the world views freedom differently than we do.

In Europe they view "free speech" differently. You may not have the right in many European countries to engage in so-called "hate speech". While I certainly don't subscribe to t

Why do Americans always seem to have this attitude? It always seems like they want all the benefits from being part of international organisations, but none of the responsibilities.

A lot of us wouldn't mind giving up the purported benefits as well, actually.

One quite shocking example: the only two countries that are not signatories to the Convention on the Rights of the Child are Somalia and the US (and Somalia has announced plans to ratify it soon). I mean for God's sake, what possible objection could the

I did look it up on Wikipedia. I was just relaying the running joke (and what I could remember about one particular example) from law school which was prior to 1995 anyway, as it happens. I was more referring to the general mindset of "one set of rules for us, one for everyone else" that is prevalent (rather than the issue of treaties more generally... that was just an example).

Are you sure your Olympics example is right btw? All the other countries that have both signed and ratified it, and passed it into

I forgot the sarcasm tags around the Olympics portion. My comment is calling attention to the hypocrisy of child labor laws not applying to sports. I consider gymnastics specifically, as well as any other mostly under 18 Olympic competition to be child abuse.

"one set of rules for us, one for everyone else" is a very simplified look at reality. As most models do, they simplify by throw out the details, to make it understandable, but then lose accuracy.

Because Treaties are the only thing that are of higher authority than our constitution. The same constitution that has been amended 27 times. Additionally, the mistake we make is if anything being too willing to sign treaties. There's definitely treaties out there that we should never have ratified, let alone signed. The WTO is a good example of a horrible mistake that somebody should've seen coming. It's not that bad, but good luck punishing the Chinese or Japanese for currency manipulation, and good luck

That's a rather broad statement that smells suspiciously of flamebait. One could just as easily ask why other countries constantly want to include the US in agreements that will often require US to shoulder a disproportionate burden of the cost. The question is just as valid (that is to say, a grain of truth but barely scratches the surface).

As far as CRC (http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/crc.htm)...

I mean for God's sake, what possible objection could the US have against a treaty aiming to prevent the organised sale of children into slavery and child prostitution??

This is like when someone attaches a ridiculous rider to a bill related to children, then publishes smear ads when a house member votes the bill down because of the rider. "Jo Schmo is against The Children!"
A couple of things that might be objectionable (I don't know this for sure), which aren't covered in your over-generalized "prevent sale into slavery":

1. The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and. as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.

What does that mean for those who want to give up their children for adoption at birth? In those cases it is possible for the child to know and be cared for by his parents, but also not reasonable if the parents will not be keeping the child.

A child whose parents reside in different States shall have the right to maintain on a regular basis, save in exceptional circumstances personal relations and direct contacts with both parents

And if one of those parents is in prison due to having tried to kill the child? If it were my kid, you can be damned sure I wouldn't allow him/her to visit that parent until and unless they requested it with full understanding of what it means.

States Parties recognize the important function performed by the mass media and shall ensure that the child has access to information and material from a diversity of national and international sources, especially those aimed at the promotion of his or her social, spiritual and moral well-being and physical and mental health.
To this end, States Parties shall:
(a) Encourage the mass media to disseminate information and material of social and cultural benefit to the child and in accordance with the spirit of article 29;
(b) Encourage international co-operation in the production, exchange and dissemination of such information and material from a diversity of cultural, national and international sources;
(c) Encourage the production and dissemination of children's books;
(d) Encourage the mass media to have particular regard to the linguistic needs of the child who belongs to a minority group or who is indigenous;
(e) Encourage the development of appropriate guidelines for the protection of the child from information and material injurious to his or her well-being, bearing in mind the provisions of articles 13 and 18.

Do I need to explain the potential pitfalls in this one? Particularly "e"? Or the rather ignorant assumptions present in "d"?

2. States Parties shall pursue full implementation of this right and, in particular, shall take appropriate measures:
(d) To diminish infant and child mortality;
(b) To ensure the provision of necessary medical assistance and health care to all children with emphasis on the development of primary health care;
(c) To combat disease and malnutrition, including within the framework of primary health care, through, inter alia, the application of readily available technology and through the provision of adequate nutritious foods and clean drinking-water, taking into consideration the dangers and risks of environmental pollution;
(d) To ensure appropriate pre-natal

I think it has something to do with the fact that we have a lot of xenophobic paranoid people here who don't think much of our own government and think even less of other world governments. They see the UN at best as a useless organization and at worst a way for "evildoers" to usurp our independence. Some probably think it has something to do with jealousy over our "freedom," some think it's communists/atheists trying to destroy america.

I imagine that this portion of the document might have something to do with it not being adopted, since it seems to contravene Roe v. Wade:

Bearing in mind that, as indicated in the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, "the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth",

A global law enforcement agency just serves to usurp the rights of a nations citizens by rendering a nations laws harmless. While this may be in the best interest of large corporations, it is most certainly not in the best interest of the majority of internet users. This system will be abused, taken advantage of, and otherwise misrepresented to back the agendas and interests of organizations. Should this actually happen, which I highly doubt, I see a lot of innocent individuals getting crucified by this age

The problem here is not a lack of police with the jurisdiction to investigate and arrest suspected hackers. The subject countries have lots of those.

What's missing is a state willingness to prosecute, a willingness that won't change just because the cops are enforcers from Superpol. There is no reason to believe that the US, for example, would let a bunch of policemen from Europe and the Middle East come in and arrest US citizens on the basis of allegations that they broke some Saudi law. They barely tolerate Interpol, and those guys are just librarians.

When you balance the probable damage a "global police force" would do (is anyone naive enough to think that their mandate wouldn't be expanded?) against the damage that expatriate hackers do, the wise thing is to go with the hackers. The proper solution is the one already in place, and that's to have bilateral and multi-lateral extradition agreements.

Sending contract cops into a country that doesn't have laws against hacking may make good TV but the real-life consequences are much more complicated.

and the parallel holds, since the end of the real wild west consisted of the feds moving into lawless lands and taking over from vigilante, ad hoc systems of justice, just like this proposal. that was pretty much the historical end of the real wild west

so i'm waiting for the internet's version of "dodge city", where tourists can go and experience the vicarious thrill of driveby downloading, phishing exploits, nigerian email scams, and id theft, much like in the real "dodge city", gunfights at high noon and cattle rustling are now recreated for tourist's sake

"wow dad, i was browsing the dancing hamster website with the purple gorilla in the taskbar on the windows ME simulation, and like, i just got pwned! the simulation showed me as the payload modified the registry settings in the simulation! was it really like that in the bad old days?"

"that's right son, when your dad was your age browsing the internet, you always had your sidearm antivirus at the ready. craven desperate men and psychotic outlaws were always just around the corner, a click away. you had to deal with danger and treachery on a daily basis"

"gee dad, did you actually get an email from belarus claiming to be citibank asking for your security credentials out of concern for your security?"

"sure did"

"that's scary dad! how did the early internet pioneers ever survive in such a hostile wilderness. how did we ever make it this far?"

and the parallel holds, since the end of the real wild west consisted of the feds moving into lawless lands and taking over from vigilante, ad hoc systems of justice, just like this proposal. that was pretty much the historical end of the real wild west

Well, except some of the main figures of Wild West lore -- Wyatt and Morgan Earp, to name two -- were Feds. Lawless and crooked Feds, but Feds nevertheless.

Not to rain on your parade, but you may not have noticed that all the "wild west" stories about places like Dodge City and Tombstone are about federal marshals abusing their power and getting little help from the citizenry.

In fact, the "wild west" was a pretty quiet place that only became wild when the US Marshals arrived and disarmed the townspeople, creating a large supply of victims that in turn justified the federal presence.

i see you are feeding this weird mythology that governments and police are the source of criminal behavior in this world. the truth is that criminal behavior runs amok without some sort of police presence. of course a minority of police will always do bad things, but you're insane depiction of the wild west as crime free utopia until the government arrives is some sort psychotic delusion on your part

These towns had councils, reeves and sheriffs and all the machinery of law. They were also armed against the threats of the contemporary version of biker gangs who, as a consequence, behaved themselves in town. As I said, pretty quiet places.

vigilante justice is vigilante justice: no accountability. compromised positions (your brother owns the saloon that was shot up/ it was your head of cattle that was stolen/ etc). petty nepotism. corruption. a posse of yahoos acting as cop, judge, jury, and executioner is not justice

yeah, sure an improperly identified/ untried/ hastily executed cattle rustler may make for a quiet town, but its also an evil town

such that the imperfect but impartial imposition of federal justice is far, far superior. the level

You cannot impose yourself into someone else's country as their laws differ from yours. Calling it a "safe harbor" is a bit offensive. Like you want to poke them with a stick but local law, culture and geography doesn't allow you to do what you please with "them"..?

I'll start imposing my local laws on Americans. Then complain you wont allow me to proscecute an American, on American soil, under my terms. Say, I would be an Arab (I'm not) and I consider porn-watching criminal and punishble by death. (I've had to write a report on Saudi servers of a client once, where someone downloaded porn hoping we wouldn't login on those servers. Which became locally a criminal case punishable by death. No joke.)

As long you do not have a consensus, globally or the on what "cyber criminality" is, and the severity which it should be prosecuted and make it equally enforcable (legal backing) this is impossible. Once you have this consensus, globally, there would be no "safe harbor" anymore.

I say we get Al Gore to form the world police. After all, he 'invented' the Internet and the Internet is an American invention. He might have more luck with doing this rather than herding people in climate change talks...

If something is already illegal in a country A, we don't need more laws or services, because you can already arrest this man. If something is legal, he is allowed to do that in his country, even if that is not something other countrys like.

Also, thats not how the internet work. The internet work in "networks". If you have a problem with a student, on a university, you call the ISP / university. If you have a problem in other country, you contact the authorities of that other country.

On the one hand malicious hackers should be killed. On the other, many of the most capable of them are believed to be closely tied to the Russian and Chinese (and Nigerian) governments, encouraged for both their ability to bring in monies, and for cooperation in state cyber-espionage goals. So the only usable model for international intervention may be the one currently used against Qaida in Pakistan - sending in American drones. Except Russia and China (and Nigeria) have rather more use for their hackers t

How about first just doing something about the crimes? I've had good success with the UK police force, and the FBI (with some exceptions), but several other countries authorities have been painful to work with even in cases where there is solid evidence and the countries laws have clearly been broken. I can see how a law like this would help things, but just working on the cases based on current laws would already make a big difference.

I'm surprised no one has ever heard of InterPol, it is on every video casette, dvd and Bd you ever owned. The problem is countries other than the US have rights. No one is going to surrender those rights to allow a bunch of gun toting Americans cart blanch to fire at will.

Actually, I have to tell you... the worst thing about the Nazi regime is that it's convinced everyone in the "civilized world" that things are peachy because they're not the Nazis. It's worse in the US where we "beat them and destroyed fascism because we're the red, white and blue and blah, blah, blah."

So, even as the USA and UK become more draconian and controlling in ways that would have made Hilter nut himself, we keep looking back saying, "We're nothing like those guys. None of our police wear skull."

Once upon a time I used to think that having separate countries was the problem with this world. I see now that national borders are the only thing keeping us safe from tyranny on a global scale. I see now that we cannot be ruled by one single governmental entity and expect everyone to be treated fairly.

Since the USA is a safe harbor for war criminals they don't want to prosecute, and we have an ICJ for dealing with that, my question is: when are they going to agree to having the International Court of Justice [icj-cij.org] as a court of law for the warcriminals they don't want to prosecute?

Or would it be that if the USA doesn't prosecute for some reason, it's the due course of law, but if another country does not prosecute for some reason (like, people doing things not being punishable in the

Here's what you do instead of creating abusive "cyberpolice": you set up the system so that cheating is very difficult to impossible in the first place, through self-enforcing protocols and smart contracts. Distributed systems, like DHT and P2P, already apply this to some extent.

There is no need for yet another global police force of any sort. I neither need nor want anybody not of my nation having the authority to investigate me at the whim of... whomever. There is nothing wrong with having other countries' own police, on noticing a crime, contacting the police through established channels where the crime took place, and asking them to investigate and prosecute according to THEIR OWN LAWS.No, the answer here is very simple. Those countries who refuse to co-operate and continually